A blog about the shadowy world of law enforcement informants with particular focus on the story of Michigan prison inmate "White Boy Rick" Richard Wershe, Jr. His amazing story compels us to look at many aspects of this underworld of the criminal underworld.

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Sunday, March 27, 2016

Several
past Informant America blog posts have suggested the case that sent Richard J.
Wershe, Jr. to prison for life was questionable at best. He was arrested and
charged with possession with intent to deliver over 650 grams of cocaine. The
police case had gaping holes in it which were helped by Wershe’s own defense
team, two lawyers loyal to Detroit Mayor Coleman Young and believed to be
intent on ensuring Wershe went to prison for a long, long time. It is
enlightening—and disturbing—to take a hard look at the evidence—or lack of
it—behind Rick Wershe’s life prison term.

PART ONE

May 22, 1987 was a Friday. The top story in that morning’s
paper reported massive weapons searches by the Detroit Police in Detroit’s
public schools may be illegal. Even the chief of operations for the Wayne
County Prosecutor’s Office questioned the legality of the heavy-handed police
tactic.

I Knew
You Were Waiting for Me by Detroit’s own Aretha Franklin was one
of the top tunes on the radio. As it turns out, the police were waiting for
Richard Wershe, Jr.

Wershe had been recruited at age 14 by the FBI to become a
paid informant against the Curry Brothers, a drug gang connected by marriage to
Coleman Young, Detroit’s all-powerful mayor. Wershe dropped out of school to
play junior G-man full time. Not only did Wershe inform on the Curry gang, he
told the FBI about corrupt Detroit cops, too. Wershe’s undercover work was for
a federal and local drug task force. There were Detroit cops assigned to the
task force. It is reasonable to believe word got back to the Detroit Police
narcotics section that Wershe was telling on cops on the take.

When a federal drug task force got what it needed from
Wershe’s dangerous undercover work they kicked him to the curb to fend for
himself. The teen informant turned to the only trade he knew; the one law
enforcement taught him. He decided to become a cocaine wholesaler. In the
spring of 1987 Rick Wershe, Jr. was on the police radar as a rising newcomer in
Detroit’s drug underworld. By then the teenager’s social network mostly revolved
around ruthless men in Detroit’s black drug trade, men for whom murder was just
a cost of doing business. Wershe had no family support network to speak of. As
he told the Michigan Parole Board in 2003: “I
really didn’t have any parental supervision at the time. I was basically
raising myself and I went down some wrong paths.” Richard J. Wershe, Jr.
was 17 on that fateful night in May, 1987.

The weather was nice. It had been in the mid-80s during the
day. As night fell the skies were mostly cloudy, as usual for Detroit.

About 8:00 p.m. that Friday night, Rick Wershe was a
passenger in a car driven by his pal, Roy Grissom. They pulled up to Wershe’s
family home on Hampshire on Detroit’s east side.

A Detroit police patrol car
was waiting for them. The police put on their lights and made a traffic stop. One
of the cops was Rodney Grandison, an officer Wershe knew well. Wershe says he
and Officer Grandison smoked pot together from time to time.

The flashing police lights quickly attracted neighborhood
attention. As the police approached the car, Wershe tried to stash a shopping
bag of cash under the front seat. The officers saw him do it and they tried to
grab the bag of cash. But somehow Wershe’s sister Dawn, who, along with Richard
Wershe, Sr., had run out of the house to see the commotion, managed to get the
cash first. She ran back in the Wershe family home with the cash bag.

Other police cars waiting nearby quickly swarmed onto the
narrow residential street, clogging it along with numerous residents who had
come outside to see what was happening. The commotion and confusion escalated.
In the chaos Rick Wershe slipped away—empty handed. None of the police officers
stopped him.

Months later at his trial, Wershe remembers the police
testified that a crowd quickly materialized and in the re-telling they said
people were circling the block in Jeeps firing pistols in the air. Why, I
asked, with so many police at the scene didn’t any of them arrest the people
shooting guns? “It (the trial testimony) sounded like a movie, dude,” Wershe
told me as he tried to describe the farcical nature of his jury trial. He also
notes any streetwise young man knew not to carry a weapon in a Jeep because most
police officers equated a Jeep in the ghetto with a drug dealer so traffic
stops of Jeeps were commonplace.

What happened next depends on who is doing the talking—or testifying.

After a police traffic stop in front of his house turned chaotic Rick Wershe left the scene and allegedly walked between the houses between his street and the next street over. One witness said he was carrying a big box. Another said he was empty-handed. It's one of many inconsistencies in the case that sent him to prison for life. (Google Map)

A young woman who was Rick Wershe’s age named
Patricia Story lived one block over on Camden. At Wershe’s preliminary exam she
testified she saw him walking between the houses between Hampshire and Camden
carrying a box. She testified she was sitting on the front porch and Wershe
approached her.

A: “He
asked me could he take the box and put it in the backyard.”

Q: “And
what do you say to that?

A: “I
told him no.”

Q: “All
right. And when you tell him no, does he say anything else to you?”

A: “Well,
he asked me again and I told him no.”

Q: “Is
there any conversation about money?”

A: “Yeah.”

Q: “Tell
me how that happened.”

A: “Well,
after I told him no, he offered me $500. And I told him no again.”

Ms.
Story testified Wershe proceeded to her back yard, anyway. She went in the
house for a few minutes and didn’t see what he did with the box. She said the next
time she saw Wershe he was across the street walking with a police officer
between the houses toward his home on Hampshire. He didn’t have the box.

Patricia
Story’s testimony sounds straightforward enough but there’s more to know about her.
More on that later.

Story’s
next door neighbor, David Golly, testified he was sitting on his front porch,
next door to the Story home at the same time that Patricia Story was sitting on
her porch.

Golly
testified under questioning by the case prosecutor that Rick Wershe walked to
his porch from the Story front porch after he spoke briefly with Patricia Story.

Q: “Has
he got anything in his hands?”

A: “No.”

Q: “When
he comes up to your porch, when he comes toward your porch, does he say
anything to you?

A: “Yeah.
He says just watch the backyard.”

Notice
Golly contradicts his next door neighbor. Patricia Story testified Wershe had a
box in his hands. Golly testified he didn’t. The only thing they agree on is
Wershe’s apparent interest in the back yard. There’s more to know about Golly,
too. More on that later.

Golly
testified he went to the Story back yard with Patricia Story’s father. Together
they started looking for a box. Golly says he found it beneath a porch. He told
the court Mr. Story panicked and ran back in his house.

Golly
says his uncle, known as Moosey Norris, was visiting with him at the time and
Uncle Moosey picked up the box and brought it in the Story house at Mr. Story’s
invitation. (The man known as Moosey later told a lawyer his real name was
Walter Franklin. Whatever his name, Rick Wershe says he was eventually murdered
after Rick had gone to prison.) The box was placed in a bedroom, Golly
testified. Under cross-examination by defense attorney Bill Bufalino (now
deceased) Golly was unequivocal about the box:

Q: “After you saw the box under the porch, did
you see anybody open that box?

A: “No.”

Q: “When the box got put in the bedroom was it
still sealed?”

A: “Yes.”

Q: “Did you ever see the box opened?”

A: “No.”

Q: “So it was closed tight?”

A: “Yes.”

Q: “You don’t know what was in it?”

A: "No."

Hmm.
The box is sealed shut, according to Golly’s sworn testimony. Several hours
later the police show up at the Story house after a telephoned “anonymous tip.”
A police officer takes the box. That officer was the third and final witness at
Wershe’s preliminary exam; Detroit Police Officer Greg Woods, a member of the
self-styled No Crack Crew of local and federal narcs. The No Crack Crew had
been after Rick Wershe for several months.

Woods
testified he arrived at the Story house about 10:00 p.m. that night. He said as
he arrived the owner of the house was coming out of the house and toward the
police officers with a box in his hands. Under prosecution examination Woods
says he took possession of the box from Mr. Story.

Q:
“When you take possession of the box, do you eventually open it or are
you present when it is eventually opened?

A: “It
was partially opened at the time, yes. I finally did open the top, yes.”

Q: “When
you first see Mr. Story coming out of the house with that box opened—

A: “Partially
opened, yes.”

Q: “—had
there been policemen inside the house before you saw the box come out?”

A: “No.”

Q: “Are
you present when the box is completely opened?”

A: “Yes.

Officer Woods testified when he opened the box he saw what
he knew to be wrapped kilos of cocaine. He said there were eight kilos in the
box.

At the end of Rick Wershe’s preliminary exam on charges of
possession with intent to distribute over 650 grams of cocaine, we are left
with the following facts and questions:

Rick Wershe and a pal are stopped by the police on a
pretext traffic stop.

Wershe had a shopping bag of cash but no drugs. His sister
grabs the bag before the police can and she runs into her house with the cash.

A crowd spills into the street along with dozens of cops.

Rick Wershe walks away empty-handed.

A teenage neighbor claims she saw Wershe walking between
houses toward her house carrying a large box.

The neighbor claims Wershe asked her to put the box behind
her house. She said no.

A second neighbor, who lives next door to the teen witness
said he saw Wershe at the same time as the teen, but he testified Wershe wasn’t
carrying a box.

After Wershe leaves with the police the neighbors search
the back yard for a box and they find one. The box is taken in to the teen girl’s
house. A neighbor/witness said the box was taped shut.

About two hours later, acting on a mysterious anonymous
phone tip, the police arrive and take the box. The officer who took possession
of the box says it was partially open when he took control of the box.

There are questions which remain unresolved to this day.

If Wershe didn’t have box with him when the police made the
traffic stop, where did it come from?

Who opened the box?

Was anything removed from the box?

Did Wershe have a box or not?

This installment of Informant America has just scratched the surface. The mysteries and conflicts surrounding the evidence and testimony used
to send Rick Wershe, Jr. to prison for life go even deeper and raise more
disturbing questions. More on that next week.

Sunday, March 20, 2016

Informant
America is focused on the ordeal of Richard J. Wershe, Jr. who is serving a
life prison term for a non-violent drug crime committed when he was 17. All
others similarly charged in Michigan have been released. The only difference
is, Wershe was a confidential informant for the FBI as a teenager and he told on corrupt
Detroit cops and the brother-in-law of Coleman Young, the late mayor of the
City of Detroit. Wershe appears to be the victim of a vendetta that is determined
to keep him in prison until he dies for informing on politically-connected
people. From time to time it’s useful and insightful to ask, ‘What does Rick think?’

I had a chat a few days ago by phone with Rick Wershe from
Oaks Correctional Facility in Manistee where he spends his days in a cell just
a bit larger than the typical residential bathroom. In fact, we had two conversations. He reached out to me the next day to add some additional comments for this blog post. I asked Rick to give me his
thoughts about the obstacles and roadblocks he’s encountered trying to get a
parole like everyone else who was charged and sent to prison in Michigan under
similar circumstances.

After nearly three decades behind bars, Rick Wershe and his
family got a ray of hope late last summer when Wershe’s attorney requested a
re-sentencing based on appellate and U.S. Supreme Court decisions related to
inmates imprisoned when they were juveniles.

Wershe’s current case judge, Dana
Hathaway of Wayne County Circuit Court agreed he should get a revised sentence, essentially to time served, but the Wayne County Prosecutor,
Kym Worthy, vigorously opposed the re-sentencing, fighting it all the way to
the Michigan Supreme Court where it now awaits a decision. What follows is a
lightly edited question-and-answer discussion with Rick Wershe, Jr..

Rick Wershe, Jr. in Wayne County Circuit Court last September. His hopes of finally getting released from his life sentence were dashed when the Wayne County Prosecutor launched an aggressive battle to keep him behind bars. That battle is still being waged and is now before the Michigan Supreme Court for review. (Photo: Brian Kauffman, Detroit Free Press)

Q: How
have events in the past year impacted you?

A: “Mostly it’s impacted my kids and grandkids because they
got their hopes up and we finally got a judge who saw that the sentence is
unjust and then we have someone like Kym Worthy who comes along and makes stuff
up to keep me in here.”

Q:
What is your reaction to Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy fighting the
judge’s effort to reduce your sentence?

A: “I always knew someone down there had something personal
against me and to be honest, that just solidified what me and many other people
knew. They’re fighting to keep me in jail for a drug crime, for something you
give other people five years for now.

“I don’t think she believes in the Constitution when the
Constitution says a sentence is unjust and she fights to keep me serving a life
sentence and you have our nation’s Supreme Court saying no one who was
convicted as a juvenile should be in prison for life for a nonviolent crime.”

Q: Do
you think Kym Worthy is continuing a vendetta against you?

A: “I think some of the law enforcement people the
government had me cooperate against and something to do with the Damion Lucas
murder has a lot to do with her vendetta against me. I think she was friends
with someone or someone is telling her what to do. I don’t this woman. I never
had any dealings with her, so why would she hate me so bad? She gives
murderers, rapists and child molesters plea bargains but she’s fighting to keep
me in jail when she says her office is strained for resources.”

Q: Do
you think she has a vendetta against you?

A: “I would have to say the answer to that question would
be yes. I think she has something against me. I don’t know what it is. I
cooperated with her office, I cooperated with the government, what else can I
do? Usually (in the criminal justice system) when you cooperate you get something
in return. When I read the paper these people who cooperate with her, these
murderers, get sentence reductions and this and that and I did it (cooperated)
and I’m being punished for it.”

Wershe is keenly aware his one and only parole hearing in 2003 was rigged against him. The Wayne County Prosecutor's Office, then under Michael Duggan who is now Detroit's mayor, marshaled testimony against a parole for Wershe from high ranking police officers with impressive titles but admittedly no knowledge of him or his role in the drug underworld. Previous Informant America blogs have detailed how statements placed in the record against Wershe were false, misleading and in at least one case, coerced. Wershe also notes a recent Informant America blog post which explained how the head of the drug crimes unit of the prosecutor's office under Kym Worthy was convicted on charges she conspired with a judge to use perjured testimony to get drug convictions in a case in suburban Inkster. "That was 24 months after my parole hearing," Wershe says."Is anyone going to take note of a pattern here?"As we discussed the battle by the criminal justice system to keep him in prison on unsupportable claims that he was a major drug dealer and menace to society, Wershe asked me to include this:"I know you’ve brought it up before (in Informant America blog posts), but where’s the proof? Where’s the evidence? There is none."Wershe has a hard time reconciling his life sentence with the sentences handed down to the truly major cocaine wholesale importers who were above him in the supply chain. The late Art Derrick and an importer in Miami each spent six months in prison and were then released."How is it the people that were giving me the drugs on credit, they get six months in prison and they sold thousands of pounds of cocaine in the city of Detroit. They got six months in prison and I get a life sentence as a juvenile? How is that equal justice? Wershe asks in evident frustration. "Our nation’s Supreme Court, it says on the front 'Equal Justice Under law'. How is this equal justice? If this isn’t a vendetta, it’s damned sure not equal justice."

Former
Detroit Police Homicide Inspector and later City Council President Gil Hill
passed away recently due to illness. He was 84. Hill had been under FBI suspicion
for years for obstruction of justice in the homicide investigation of the 1985 murder
of 13-year old Damion Lucas who was killed by members of the Johnny Curry drug
gang who were trying to intimidate the boy’s uncle who owed them money. They
shot up the uncle’s house. The uncle wasn’t home but his nephews, including
Damion Lucas, were in the house. The boy was hit in the chest by a machine gun
bullet and died in his little brother’s arms.

Afterward,
Wershe, who was working as a confidential informant for the FBI in an
investigation of the Curry gang, was riding in a car with Johnny Curry when Gil
Hill called. Curry put the call on speakerphone and Wershe heard Hill reassure Curry
he didn’t have anything to worry about in the Damion Lucas murder investigation
because he, Hill, would make sure the investigation didn’t focus on the Currys.
Wershe told his FBI handler about the conversation between Curry and Hill. Johnny
Curry was sent to prison and in a prison interview he told two FBI agents he
paid Gil Hill a $10,000 bribe to keep the investigation away from the Curry
drug organization. It worked. The Damion Lucas murder is now in the “cold case”
file.

In the
early 1990s Wershe helped the FBI—again, but this time from prison—in an
undercover sting operation aimed at prosecuting drug-corrupt cops. The sting
almost netted Gil Hill who was then a member of the Detroit City Council. The
street-savvy Hill was suspicious of the sting operation and backed out,
avoiding indictment.

Q:
What do you think about Gil Hill’s role in your dilemma?

A: “I believe it was him and (former Detroit U.S. Attorney
and Gil Hill associate) Jeffrey Collins who orchestrated that whole thing.”

The late Gil Hill - Longtime boss of the Detroit Police Homicide Section, later a member of the Detroit City Council. (Photo: Paul Sancya, Associated Press)

(This
is a reference to Wershe’s 2003 parole hearing where police witnesses who knew
nothing about Wershe testified against releasing him on parole and a DEA agent
presented to the parole board misleading and questionable “evidence” that
Wershe was a major drug dealer.)

“It’s clear he (Hill) knows that I was the one who told the
government about the Damion Lucas thing (murder cover-up to protect the Johnny
Curry drug gang) and it’s clear I am the one who helped them (FBI) ensnare all
these cops in which he got away by the skin of his ass on the police corruption
probe. He sat down with these people (undercover FBI agents posing as big-time
drug dealers from Miami), he asked them for money and then he (Hill) got
spooked and he walked away. It wasn’t like he was conducting an investigation
or anything. He was a city councilman. (And) let’s be real; anyone who knows
Detroit politics or anyone that knows the Detroit police department from years
ago knows Gil Hill was corrupt.

“They can praise him (Hill) all they want, Vince.”

(Detroit
Mayor Mike Duggan, a former Wayne County Prosecutor who strongly opposed Wershe's parole in a 2003 letter to the parole board, issued a glowing statement
about Hill following his death: "Gil Hill spent more than 40 years serving
our city in the Detroit Police Department and as a member of the Detroit City
Council. He never stopped believing in our city and dedicated his life to
making our city a better place for all.")

“They can say he did all this for the city. You have a law
enforcement officer saying he watched him take a $10,000 bribe from Johnny
Curry. You have Johnny Curry saying he gave him a $10,000 bribe and you have me
listening to a phone call (rhw speakerphone call cited above between Hill and
Johnny Curry in which Hill reassures Curry he doesn’t need to worry about the
homicide investigation of the Damion Lucas murder because he, Hill, will take
care of it.). If anyone has any doubt that Gil Hill was corrupt, they’re
biased; whether it be Kym Worthy or anyone in Detroit from the mayor on down.
If they say Gil Hill wasn’t corrupt they are biased and have their reasons for
doing so because Gil Hill was a corrupt cop.”

Q: Do
you get bitter sometimes?

A: “Absolutely. Listen, I have good days and bad days. I’m
not going to say that I don’t. I’ve been in here almost 29 years. You’ve taken
my whole life from me for something that law enforcement got me involved in,
and then lied about and wouldn’t stand up and say ‘this is partially our fault.’
Do I blame them totally? No. But I was a 17-year old kid. Did I know selling
drugs was wrong? Absolutely. Did I think it would cost me the rest of my life?
Absolutely not.”

Sunday, March 13, 2016

Last
week’s Informant America piece on the late Gil Hill was the 52nd
post on this blog; one year of writing about the plight of Michigan prison
inmate Richard J. Wershe, Jr. What have we learned over the past year? A lot.
And a lot of it isn’t pretty. Let’s review.

Disillusionment is one of the burdens of being an adult. We
learn the truth about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the cleavage and
cheekbones of most Hollywood starlets.

Another disillusionment is what we call justice. The naïve
and clueless like to think it’s woven in to the fabric of our nation’s laws and
rules and that it is the bedrock of our criminal “justice” system. Tain’t so.
As a longtime federal judge once told me, “Injustices happen in court every
day.”

As a character in one of the novels of British author Terry
Pratchett famously said: “There's no justice. Just us.”

Anyone who thinks Richard J. Wershe, Jr. has received
anything close to justice is certain to be disillusioned if they look at all
the facts.

For those readers who get frustrated with my frequent
repetition of the facts in Wershe’s, case, well, too bad. He’s sick of thinking
about these facts all day every day year after year after year.

Wershe is now in the 28th year of a life prison
sentence for a non-violent drug crime committed when he was 17. Wershe is not a
“Innocence Project” case. He admits he did wrong. But he was a kid. A kid who
had been inserted in the dirty dangerous drug underworld by federal agents. He
committed a drug crime in the only trade he knew; the one law enforcement
taught him. But he also helped law enforcement prosecute some of the people
within the system who have enabled the deadly drug trade to flourish. Wershe
provided tremendous help to “law and order.”

Every single Michigan prison “lifer” convicted under
similar circumstances has been paroled. Multiple murderers and serial rapists
and child molesters have gone to prison, done their time and have been paroled
in the time Wershe has been behind bars.

The only difference is Wershe, who is white, was recruited
by the FBI—at age 14—to help the U.S. Justice (?) Department prosecute a
politically-wired black drug gang. Not only did Wershe help the feds nail the
drug gang, he also told them about police drug corruption in the top ranks of
the Detroit Police Department. And he helped the FBI prosecute and convict a
dozen cops and the brother-in-law of Detroit’s then-mayor, Coleman Young in a
major drug case. Wershe also told the feds about obstruction of justice by
celebrity cop-turned-city-councilman Gil Hill in the murder of a little Detroit
boy. For a $10,000 bribe Hill made sure the investigation didn’t touch several
members of the Johnny Curry drug gang. Hill was also on the periphery of the
FBI undercover sting that netted the dirty cops and the mayor’s brother-in-law.
He escaped indictment because of a lack of courage at the federal level. The little boy's murderers have never been brought to justice

There's no justice. Just us.

All of the above is the basis for saying Wershe made
enemies in the Detroit Black Caucus. He pissed off the black political power
establishment of Detroit by helping the FBI successfully prosecute some of their
own. It is the basis for a vendetta against Wershe that has continued to infect
the Detroit/Wayne County criminal justice system to this day. No one—white or
black—in the criminal justice system wants to cross the Black Caucus. If you
think whites have all the power in Michigan, just ask Rick Wershe. As Ralph
Musilli, Wershe’s attorney puts it, “he told on the wrong people.”

There's no justice. Just us.

Federal law enforcement is complicit in this for what they
didn’t do, for failure to do their duty. That continues to this day, too. A
retired FBI agent who was the longtime legal adviser to the FBI’s Detroit
office has said, “Wershe was arguably the most productive informant the Detroit
division ever had.” Yet, successive FBI special-agents-in-charge of the Detroit
office and successive United States attorneys for the Eastern District of
Michigan have cravenly refused to step up and push for parole for Richard
Wershe, Jr. If they did they’d have to admit the federal government recruited a
14-year old kid to fight in the War on Drugs and when things went awry, they
abandoned him, they left him to rot in prison for the rest of his life rather
than admit what they did.

There's no justice. Just us.

Over the past year of blog posts, we’ve seen the Michigan
Parole Board, which consists of ex-prosecutors, police chiefs and career employees
of the Department of Corrections, is accountable to no one. There is no one
looking over their shoulder when they decide who to parole and who to keep in
prison. If the board says “no interest” in an inmate’s case, that’s the end of
it. If there’s new evidence, new circumstances impacting a prisoner’s status,
it doesn’t matter. “No interest.” There’s no process in the parole system that
allows for the consideration of new information. These 10 people decide,
without any outside oversight or review, how millions of taxpayer dollars are
spent in terms of keeping people in prison or releasing them. The governor,
whoever it may be at any time, is nominally in charge of the parole board
but if you look at the governor’s list of priorities, the parole and pardon
process is certain to be at the very bottom.

There's no justice. Just us.

In the past year Informant
America has shown through law enforcement’s own paper trail that there is
no basis—none—for keeping Rick Wershe in prison as a “menace to society.” The
Wayne County Prosecutor’s office admits—in writing—“the records do not exist”
for claims by that office to the parole board that Rick Wershe was a major drug
dealer who led a murderous gang and is a man who deserves to spend the rest of
his life in prison. Yet, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy—who is black—continues
to spend county tax dollars fighting to keep Wershe—who is white—in prison
until he dies, even after her office admitted the records “do not exist” to support
that position. Worthy owes her political position to the Detroit Black Caucus
which hates Wershe because he helped the FBI try to prosecute two of its most
powerful members.

Kym Worthy, Wayne County Prosecutor (Photo: Al Goldis-AP)

There's no justice. Just us.

These blog posts have also shown the willingness to break
the law by the people sworn to uphold the law. Perjury—lying under oath on the
witness stand—is a felony that is not only acceptable but committed with
abandon and impunity by cops and even prosecutors, on occasion. Gerard “Mick”
Biernacki, one of the cops who busted Rick Wershe, was known among other cops
as Pinocchio for his tendency to lie on the witness stand. He was never
prosecuted for perjury.

The late Gerard "Mick" Biernacki, Detroit Police Officer

Yet the criminal justice system proclaims itself to be on
the side of the angels. The good guys. The white hats. The heroes. In Rick
Wershe’s case, we’ve seen that some Detroit Police narcs routinely commit the
felony of perjury while telling themselves the defendant “deserves it.” We’ve
seen that a DEA agent submitted bogus “intelligence” information about Rick
Wershe to the Michigan parole board to ensure this FBI informant remains behind
bars. Who will listen to evidence this agent misled the Michigan Parole Board?
Who will do anything about this decades-long injustice?

Sunday, March 6, 2016

One of
Rick Wershe’s tormentors has passed from the scene. Gil Hill pulled a lot of
strings to keep Wershe in prison. It worked. He’s still in prison 28 years
after his conviction. Hill got even in a devastating way because Wershe helped
the FBI investigate corruption in the Detroit Police Department. Hill was among
the targets based on Wershe’s information. Not only did he get even—he got away
with it.

They buried Gil Hill yesterday. He died early last week
from pneumonia brought on by COPD—Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. He was
84.

The newspaper obituaries recalled his high-profile police
career, including his stint as the head of the Detroit Police Homicide Section.
They noted his minor movie star status from supporting roles as actor Eddie
Murphy’s police boss in the Beverly Hills
Cop movies. The newspapers wrote about his second career in politics; how
he won election to the Detroit City Council, going on to become Council
President. They described him as a friend of the city. The obits cited his failed campaign to become mayor. He lost to
Kwame Kilpatrick, who was convicted while in office, twice, and who is still serving
time in a federal prison.

The late Gil Hill (AP Photo-Paul Sancya)

The Detroit papers—the Free
Press and the News—did NOT
mention in their obits that Hill had been under FBI suspicion for potential
criminal prosecution for official corruption in drug trafficking
investigations—twice.

The first case involved possible charges of obstructing
justice in the murder of 13-year old Damion Lucas in 1985. The young Detroit
boy had been killed by mistake by associates of large-scale drug dealer Johnny
Curry. Curry’s cronies shot up the home where the young boy was living as a message to the
boy’s uncle who owed the Curry gang for drugs they had fronted to him. The
drugs had been confiscated in a police raid and the uncle, Leon Lucas, was on the
hook to the Currys for the cost of the drugs. He said he didn’t have the money
to pay the Currys. Three members of the Curry gang shot up the Lucas house as a warning.
Leon Lucas wasn’t home but his nephews were. The oldest, Damion Lucas, caught a
machine gun slug in the chest and died in the arms of his terrified younger
brother, Frankie.

Rick Wershe, Jr., who was working secretly as an FBI informant
in the Curry investigation, told agent Herman Groman, now retired, that he, Wershe, was
present when Johnny Curry had a speakerphone conversation with Gil Hill who
assured Curry he didn’t have to worry about the homicide
investigation. Wershe says he heard Gil Hill assure Curry that he, Hill, would take care of it. Indeed, he did.

Homicide investigators working under Gil Hill never
interrogated Johnny Curry or any of his associates even though the dead boy's uncle told them he believed the Currys were responsible. Instead the homicide detectives who worked for Gil Hill pursued an
innocent man for the murder of Damion Lucas. Those charges were eventually
dropped. The Currys were never investigated. No one has ever been prosecuted for the Damion Lucas murder.

After Johnny Curry went to prison for drug trafficking he
told two FBI agents he paid Gil Hill $10,000 to keep the investigation away
from him and his drug organization. Curry said the bribe was paid in Hill’s
fifth-floor office in the Homicide section of the Detroit Police Department.
Hill denied it to reporters.

Readers who saw Gil Hill's obit articles in Detroit's two major newspapers last week were not told that he was investigated twice by the FBI for suspected drug-related corruption payoffs. There was no mention of articles like this in 1992. Newcomers to Detroit were not told about the other side of Gil Hill.

The FBI did not accumulate enough evidence to charge Hill for
obstructing the investigation of the murder of Damion Lucas.

But the case stuck in the craw of FBI agent Groman. When he
was transferred from the Detroit FBI’s drug squad to the public corruption
squad, the suspected criminality of Gil Hill was prominent on his radar screen.

In time Groman, along with agents Marty Torgler, Michael
Castro and their squad mates devised a plan for an undercover sting operation
to find which Detroit police officers might be susceptible to accepting bribes
to protect what the cops thought were dope and drug cash shipments transiting
through the city.

By now Rick Wershe was in prison, serving a life sentence
for a questionable conviction for possession of 17 pounds of cocaine. The
Detroit FBI and the Detroit U.S. Attorney, to their enduring shame, did not
lift a finger to help Wershe by stepping forward to say Wershe got in the dope
business in the first place after helping the FBI as an undercover operative.
To do so would require that they publicly admit they had recruited a 14-year
old to help them wage the so-called War on Drugs. In a bout of group cowardice,
federal law enforcement in Detroit failed to stand up for one of their best
confidential informants and allowed him to be doomed to a life in prison.

To their credit several FBI agents who worked with Wershe
back then have since expressed willingness to testify in
his behalf regarding parole. Over the years and to this day the leadership of the Detroit FBI and U.S.
Attorney’s Office has been steadfast in a craven refusal to help a man who
helped them score major prosecution victories.

In the early 1990s when the Detroit FBI was planning their undercover sting
operation to snag cops willing to be corrupted by drug cash, they approached
Rick Wershe—in prison—and asked him to help set up the undercover sting
operation by vouching for an undercover FBI agent as one of his former Miami
“connects” in the dope trade. Wershe was asked to contact Cathy Volsan Curry,
the mayor’s niece, to help the undercover agent make the necessary contacts.
Wershe and Volsan Curry had had a brief, torrid fling and Wershe knew she had “contacts.”He agreed to help.

Wershe reached out to Volsan Curry and it worked. She
consulted with her father, Willie Volsan, a longtime black gangster and dope dealer in Detroit.
Before long, a dozen or so police officers were in on the scheme to provide
police protection for supposed drugs and cash being flown in to Detroit’s City
Airport. The private plane was piloted by FBI agents.

Volsan, as the mayor’s brother-in-law, was well-connected
to the upper ranks of the Detroit Police Department. Among his pals was Gil
Hill.

Gil Hill, left, meeting with Willie Volsan (back to camera) and Sgt. James Harris. Volsan and Harris were indicted and convicted in an FBI undercover sting operation. (FBI surveillance photo)

At this point, Hill had retired from the police department
and he was now a member of the Detroit City Council. Detroit is always starved
for heroes and Hill’s status as a former “movie star” aided his rising
political popularity.

Always the savvy street cop, Hill was suspicious of the
sting operation even as he was intrigued by the payoff money to be made. In a
manner of speaking Hill circled the scheme like a vulture, evaluating whether
it was a set up.

There was a meeting at the Detroit FBI office on how to
proceed. The evidence against the targeted cops was solid. The debate was over
what to do about Gil Hill. it was a toss-up as to whether there was enough evidence to win his conviction from a jury.

The case agents argued in favor of indicting Hill. U.S.
Attorney Stephen Markman, now a Michigan Supreme Court Justice weighing Wershe’s
pending appeal to lower his sentence, also was reportedly in favor of going
forward against Hill. The lone dissenter was Hal Helterhoff, the Special Agent
in Charge of the Detroit FBI office. Helterhoff was the on-site manager for
the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He had to sign off on the prosecution of any case investigated by the FBI. Helterhoff was thoroughly indoctrinated in
the headquarters culture which is essentially summed up by the aphorism, ‘Big
case, big problems. Small case, small problems. No case, no problems.’

Helterhoff hailed from northern Wisconsin and he relished
running the Detroit office which allowed him to drive through northern Michigan
to upper Wisconsin on many weekends to visit and hang out with his family. He
didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize his perch in the Detroit office. A
transfer to another field office in another state is the last thing he wanted. If Hill was indicted but acquitted, a transfer for Helterhoff was a distinct possibility. At the meeting Helterhoff
insisted the Hill portion of the case needed more evidence. That was the
effective end of the Hill portion of the investigation. The agents knew the
street-savvy Hill would smell the sting operation and back out. For the second
time in 10 years Gil Hill escaped federal indictment for corruption.

There’s another element in all of this that no one wants to
talk about. Gil Hill was black. Gil Hill was a hero to many in the black community
who didn’t know the dark side of his career. To many he was a legendary
homicide detective and movie-star. Far fewer knew he was corrupt and only too
willing to be bribed to break the law. Even fewer knew how frightened the mighty U.S. Justice Department is when it comes to prosecuting black heroes. It takes
an extraordinary set of circumstances for the Hal Helterhoffs of the Justice
Department to risk asking a jury to convict a black hero. Federal law
enforcement is all too aware of what happened in the O.J. Simpson murder trial.
While some “leaders” of the black community complain loudly about FBI
persecution of high profile blacks, what isn’t discussed is how often corrupt black
politicians facing substantial evidence of criminality escape prosecution because of their iconic public status.

Some say Gil Hill blamed Rick Wershe for thwarting his bid to become mayor of the city of Detroit. If it weren't for Wershe's informant tips, the FBI wouldn't have been after Hill and there wouldn't be those pesky headlines associating him with drug corruption. There is significant evidence that Gil Hill played a lead
role in a collaborative scheme to mislead the Michigan Parole Board in 2003 to
ensure that Rick Wershe, Jr. remained in prison. The parole board was given false and misleading "evidence" that Wershe was/is a menace to society. That so-called evidence has been spelled
out in past blog posts on Informant
America.

This story was not mentioned in the newspaper obits last week for Gil Hill.

In one FBI court-authorized surveillance recording in 1991 Volsan
and Hill were in a meeting with undercover agents and the discussion turned to
Hill’s political future. He said he wasn’t sure if he should run for
re-election to the city council or make a run for mayor. Volsan asked him which
office he would run for. Hill expressed concern about subjecting himself to a
high profile political campaign.

“I got skeletons in my closet,” Hill told Volsan.

One of those skeletons belongs to murder victim Damion
Lucas who has never had justice. Another skeleton in Hill’s closet is still
alive. He’s spending his life in prison for helping the FBI try to root out
corrupt cops like Gil Hill. Detroit’s black political machine has worked for
years to nurture and sustain a vendetta to keep his living skeleton behind bars,
and it has succeeded. His name is
Richard J. Wershe, Jr.

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About Me

My name is Vince Wade. I am an independent/freelance investigative reporter, writer, narrator, multimedia producer and director.
I live near the beach in a city outside Los Angeles.
I started in radio news but I spent most of my career at network-affiliated TV stations in Detroit, Michigan where I covered crime, the courts, public corruption and various scandals. I’ve won over 20 awards including three Emmys, 1st Place for TV News documentary at the New York International Film Festival, plus wire service reporting awards and others.
I work on topics and projects that interest me and stories that need to be told.